Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lillith Blackheart]

Hm. Interesting. It's compulsory?

[Ciarente]

As the link says ... although of course, it can't be compulsory to actually vote in a secret ballot. But you will be fined if you don't go to the polling place and collect your ballot paper and put it in the box. You can write 'Screw all of you' on it if you want, and every election a very small proportion of people do, but you must make a decision to not express a preference for who governs you, rather than simply not bother to turn up.

We also have what is called in some countries 'instant run-off' and in Australia 'preferential voting': you number the candidates in order of your preference for them, and if no candidate gets 50% + 1 vote in the first round, the second preferences of the candidates with the smallest number of votes is counted, until you have a result that shows which candidate is the 'preferred' candidate.

[Natalcya Katla]

I live in a country where the largest religious institution has to act the way the government tells it to - and I like it.

I live in a country where begging for money on the street is no longer a crime - I don't like that.

I live in a country where you, by registering on a list, make it illegal for telemarketers to call you - and I like it.

I live in a country where political campaign ads in media broadcasts are banned - and I like it.

I live in a country where tobacco and alcohol commercials are banned - and even though I enjoy wine, I quite like that too.

I live in a country where the government owns the oil which forms the backbone of our economy and saves the vast majority of the income thereof until rainy days appear, which has allowed us to pretty much shrug off the entire recession and emerge from it wealthier than ever before - and I fucking love it.

I live in a country where whales are food. And even though that has nothing to do with restrictions of personal liberties or the general encroachment of government per se, I still like it. In fact, whale steak is delicious. I pity the rest of the world.

[Kyoko Sakoda]

I've never understood whale hippies. I have no taste for whale but so long as they're not endangered, why not marvel at AND eat them?

[lallara zhuul]

I love the fact whenever you mention Anarchy people go with the definition that goes with the post apocalyptic visions of Hollywood.

Anarchy (from Greek: ἀναρχίᾱ anarchíā, "without ruler") may refer to any of the following:
-"No rulership or enforced authority."[1]
-"Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder."[2]
-"A social state in which there is no governing person or group of people, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder)."[3]
-"Absence or non-recognition of authority and order in any given sphere."[4]
-"Acting without waiting for instructions or official permission... The root of anarchism is the single impulse to do it yourself: everything else follows from this." [5]

Personally I would go with the middle one and anyone who does not have their mind clouded with prejudices and preconceptions could have deduced that from what I posted.

Before you get on a soapbox and go:'Grrrr... socialists!' the word in the definition is 'social', not 'socialist'.

so·cial   [soh-shuhl]
–adjective
1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
3. of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionable society: a social event.
4. living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation: People are social beings.
5. of or pertaining to human society, esp. as a body divided into classes according to status: social rank.
6. involved in many social activities: We're so busy working, we have to be a little less social now.
7. of or pertaining to the life, welfare, and relations of human beings in a community: social problems.
8. noting or pertaining to activities designed to remedy or alleviate certain unfavorable conditions of life in a community, esp. among the poor.
9. pertaining to or advocating socialism.
10. Zoology. living habitually together in communities, as bees or ants.Compare solitary (def. .
11. Botany. growing in patches or clumps.
12. Rare. occurring or taking place between allies or confederates.
–noun
13. a social gathering or party, esp. of or as given by an organized group: a church social.

Only the bolded one has any negative connotations, and even those because of being linked to the fearsome idea that it would be a good idea for the resources of a nation to be divided evenly among the community of the nation instead of having all the resources at the hands of the old power structures that has been around since the feudal ages.

We are still living in the post-feudal and post-Imperialistic era.
The wealth of nations has been generated by mostly their past, take Netherlands for example, its a little speck of a country with minimal resources, yet it has economical clout far above any of the Eastern block nations (except Russia.)
The banking system is based on old merchant families in the Dark Ages that figured out that making money by loaning it to the leadership of the nations was a brilliant idea, they have been at it for 800 years or so, competing with something like that is a bit challenging.
I could go on and on giving examples of how the old power structures make it pretty much impossible to act out any change in the current system.

Therefore for me the best thing to do economically and politically would be to stop the world for one year. Take count of all the resources, take count of all the political systems, get a bunch of really smart people together and then they make up a plan for the next 1000 years and next 1000 years we work on completing that plan.

Fuck being a wage slave for a banking system that is completely and utterly corrupt.
Fuck the corrupt politicians that just line their pockets with money as fast as they can.
Fuck the economic system that is based on scarcity of resources.

All I want to be is happy without worrying about shit like that.

[Natalcya Katla]

I had a friend at uni who went on to do a PhD proving that Mussolini did not, in fact, make the trains run on time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amn-1nJWe-g&NR=1 

[Lillith Blackheart]

I love the fact whenever you mention Anarchy people go with the definition that goes with the post apocalyptic visions of Hollywood.

I love the fact that when someone mentions Anarchy they automatically assume that people are going to go with a definition that goes with post apocalyptic visions from Hollywood.

Personally I would go with the middle one and anyone who does not have their mind clouded with prejudices and preconceptions could have deduced that from what I posted.

And here you are poisoning the well. "Anyone that doesn't agree with this is prejudiced!" That doesn't even take into account that some of us who disagreed with you knew exactly what you meant. However that does not change my statement any, so I will repeat it since instead of replying to it you opted to divert the topic:

Anarchy will always give rise to Dictatorship or Oligarchy. Always.

Only the bolded one has any negative connotations, and even those because of being linked to the fearsome idea that it would be a good idea for the resources of a nation to be divided evenly among the community of the nation instead of having all the resources at the hands of the old power structures that has been around since the feudal ages.

Except the problem with that is that there are always those that want what you have, and there are always those that have greater need for greater power, and they will go ahead and take it. And in the absence of a power structure for them to focus their needs in it, they will create one.

For the record this sort of thing has also already been done, and oddly fell apart to Oligarchies and Dictatorships.

We are still living in the post-feudal and post-Imperialistic era.

We will always be living in that era, we can't really divorce ourself from it. The true problem comes down to limited resources, human nature, and a slew of other interesting facets of the human condition. The fact that all you need is one person with just a teensy bit of megalomania and a "good idea" as to how to run things and a little charisma, and the next thing you know he's got 50 to 100 people with firearms that have decided "I have a better way to do things."

And low and behold: Things change abruptly.

The wealth of nations has been generated by mostly their past, take Netherlands for example, its a little speck of a country with minimal resources, yet it has economical clout far above any of the Eastern block nations (except Russia.)
The banking system is based on old merchant families in the Dark Ages that figured out that making money by loaning it to the leadership of the nations was a brilliant idea, they have been at it for 800 years or so, competing with something like that is a bit challenging.
I could go on and on giving examples of how the old power structures make it pretty much impossible to act out any change in the current system.

Except people have acted out those changes in various areas throughout the world, with varying degrees of lack of success. Competing with things like that are challenging not because they're simply "ingrained", but because of the fact that they function. Are they optimal function? Not in an idealistic situation, of course not. However in the current model and current situation they're the best we've got of the things we've tried.

Which is kinda sad, but what can you do? When life hands you shit. . .

Therefore for me the best thing to do economically and politically would be to stop the world for one year. Take count of all the resources, take count of all the political systems, get a bunch of really smart people together and then they make up a plan for the next 1000 years and next 1000 years we work on completing that plan.

Good luck with that, people are not that cool.

Fuck being a wage slave for a banking system that is completely and utterly corrupt.
Fuck the corrupt politicians that just line their pockets with money as fast as they can.
Fuck the economic system that is based on scarcity of resources.

Until there are unlimited resources, our economic systems will always be based on scarcity of resources. There's really know way around it. Once we get transporters so that we can build replicators, though. . . then things will be different!

All I want to be is happy without worrying about shit like that.

Which is pretty easy to accomplish really.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

Which is kinda sad, but what can you do? When life hands you shit. . .

...smear it all over the walls!

[Casiella]

I live in a country where the largest religious institution has to act the way the government tells it to - and I like it.

I live in a country where begging for money on the street is no longer a crime - I don't like that.

I live in a country where you, by registering on a list, make it illegal for telemarketers to call you - and I like it.

I live in a country where political campaign ads in media broadcasts are banned - and I like it.

I live in a country where tobacco and alcohol commercials are banned - and even though I enjoy wine, I quite like that too.

I live in a country where the government owns the oil which forms the backbone of our economy and saves the vast majority of the income thereof until rainy days appear, which has allowed us to pretty much shrug off the entire recession and emerge from it wealthier than ever before - and I fucking love it.

I live in a country where whales are food. And even though that has nothing to do with restrictions of personal liberties or the general encroachment of government per se, I still like it. In fact, whale steak is delicious. I pity the rest of the world.

Do you mind if I ask which country this is? I would not like to live there, myself. I assume there must be substantial nuance to the reality behind some of those statements, because some of them sound like human rights violations to me.

(Not that my country of birth is anything like innocent of human rights violations, for certain.)

[Lillith Blackheart]

...what exactly about any of that sounds like a human rights violation?

[Natalcya Katla]

Do you mind if I ask which country this is? I would not like to live there, myself. I assume there must be substantial nuance to the reality behind some of those statements, because some of them sound like human rights violations to me.

(Not that my country of birth is anything like innocent of human rights violations, for certain.)

The country is Norway. And I don't believe any of the things I mentioned constitute a violation of human rights. Under American law some of them would violate parts of the Constitution, certainly, in particular certain portions of the First Amendment. But human rights - no. Norway is exceedingly strict about observing those, even to the point of prohibiting oil fund investments into businesses and enterprises that are ethically questionable.

We do have one policy that mildly conflicts with human rights (according to Amnesty International), and that is the year of compulsory military or civil service required of young men. But by now, you can pretty much manage to wriggle out of that just by whining a bit to the military psychologists or priests (and that's literally all it takes). A pretty pathetic thing to do for those who aren't genuinely unfit for service, in my opinion, but at least it demonstrates that the system is far from draconian.

[Casiella]

Having a government that tells a religion what to do sounds ripe for abuse, and perhaps I misunderstand the statement about political speech via broadcast media. And compulsory military service strikes me very very negatively, though I'd assume that Norway has some sort of national service equivalent that can be substituted for young men with philosophical, moral, ethical, or religious qualms about serving in the military.

To restate, I'm not claiming that the current situation in the US is any great example. This is an area where, in my estimation, even the most classically liberal Western democracies don't live up to our own standards.

[Lillith Blackheart]

The US is not really classically liberal. We're way to the Right of most of the western world.

[Casiella]

"Liberalism" had a meaning long before its current usage, and I use it in that sense here.

[Lillith Blackheart]

I realize this, and was referring to that.